Enough, Microsoft. No One Is Endorsing Piracy. Obviously.

I love the self-righteous nature of this little Microsoft post, which quite clearly addresses the "hack" I published the other day without actually providing a link or naming names.

Unfortunately, it looks like it is time to have this conversation again though. Over the past several days there have been various posts, etc. across a variety of social media engines stating that some “hack” (be it a person or a procedure) shows that a Windows 7 Upgrade disc can perform a “clean” installation of Windows 7 on a blank drive from a technical perspective. Of course, from the posts I saw, they often forgot to mention a very basic, yet very important piece of information… “Technically possible” does not always mean legal.

Hey, Microsoft. Duh.

Let's be very clear about something here: I'm not endorsing piracy. Obviously. I'm just trying to support the millions of people that Microsoft fooled into pre-ordering Windows 7 by offering steep discounts, only to discover later that the Upgrade version they purchased unknowingly might not actually install properly. I've gotten hundreds of emails about this. I suspect Microsoft has gotten many times that number. So you know what? I'm going to continue supporting Windows users. Even as Microsoft throws them to the wind with this kind of baloney.

What really cracks me up is that this post quotes the most relevant EULA-based part of this argument. Which is this:

To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligible for the upgrade.

Exactly. That's who I'm supporting. Millions and millions of people. Many of which are discovering that their Upgrade version of Windows 7 will not install properly on their existing, Windows-based PCs. The PCs that are supposed to support upgrades.

This should be obvious. Please stop suggesting it's not, or that I am doing something else.

And for the nth time, you could (and should) have clearly documented how this works months ago. Or allowed myself and others to do so. You chose to ignore this need. So this is a problem of your own making. It's that simple. You make it too hard. And then you complain when someone else tries to make it easy.